WATERLINES
When I joined the staff of Sea
Magazine in 1977, my first job in
marine journalism, I had the good
fortune to work with a number
of talented writers and editors
who loved boating. One of those
journalists was Chris Caswell,
Sea’s editor-in-chief, whose name
appears in this magazine from time
to time, while another was a writer
named Earl Hinz, an aerospace
engineer by training. Earl was our
technical editor, and he, Chris,
and I were regularly dispatched
to the four corners of our country
with a locker full of equipment
to verify the fuel consumption
and performance claims of boat
manufacturers.
Just four years earlier, OPEC
had raised the price and slowed
the production of oil to the United
States and some of its allies for
political reasons. Gas rationing,
combined with a fast-growing
environmental movement, drove
increasingly larger segments of
the buying public to foreign-built
automobiles, which were far more
fuel-efficient than their American-made counterparts. Fuel efficiency
claims by all car builders were
suddenly front and center, viewed
with suspicion by buyers, and with
good reason—most manufacturers
generated their fuel-burn numbers
on tracks with pristine driving
surfaces, with very little fuel in the
tanks, no accessories operating, and
on days with optimal barometric
pressure and wind speeds. These
were numbers that the average
owner would never be able to
replicate in real-world driving.
Some boat manufacturers
10
passagemaker.com September 2011
Caveat Emptor
followed this practice as well,
acquiring their performance data
with very little fuel in the tank,
little or no water in the fresh
and blackwater tanks, and no
owners’ complement (personal
gear) aboard. Their testing took
place in protected waters on days
with optimal conditions, and boat
owners at first had no place to get
data that reflected the way they
really used their boats.
John Wooldridge
Editor-In-Chief
